Is time travel possible?

I'd bet on mass extinction over learning how to time travel in the next 2,600 years.

 

Certainly a possibility.
But remember that homo sapiens as a species has been around for 200,000 years and what we consider modern man has been around for 50,000 years, so 2,600 doesn't seem as long in that context. We haven't become extinct yet.
Malthus predicted human extinction almost 300 years ago.

 

In practice, though, until relatively recently it was common for women to begin having babies at a much earlier age. In fact, until the 20th century, a woman who hadn't had multiple pregnancies by age 20 was rare. So I would argue that the average span for a generation over the centuries would probably be 20 years or even less.

 

Time travel will be incredible for our Wisconsin friends.

If they time everything right, they can screw some live deer.

 

Does not count in modern NFL records.

 

Time keeps on slippin' slippin' slippin' ... into he future.

 

Good point.
So, 100 generations in the past could be more recent than 587 BCE, even more recent than more orginal estimate of 187 BCE.
However, time between generation is getting longer, so projecting 100 generations into the future would probably be even further out that 4,613 CE.
Either way, I think my point is still valid, and it was made in direct response to the post that theoretical science can't be turned into practical science in the next 100 generations.

 

Time travel was possible, but I flipped the switch off behind me. Sorry.

Not to be all spoilery, but I think you will enjoy the reign of president Miley Cyrus.

 

So ... yes?

 

I also predict that by the 1990s we'll all have flying cars like on the Jetsons.

 

It's just naive to answer yes or no.
The question is based on the H.G. Wells concept of time travel that still persists in popular entertainment.
Time travel has happened. Astronauts returning from the moon moved backward in time.

The issue is one of direction, though.
Everything that can happen, does happen, so you can't move forward in any Wells-style concept of time travel. You'd simply be moving into one of an infinite set of realities.

 

Once you start seriously discussing time travel, it gets very complicated, very fast -- and not in a "is it technologically possible?" way.
Time travel would involve, as Buck said, different versions of reality. The butterfly effect. Any little action can have severe consequences on reality as we know it. Or, are we the "true" future or just one of an infinite number of possible realities in some other timeline? Maybe someone 3,000 years from now has already come back and shaped history into the reality we know, and at one point it was different.
Or, taking another page from "Doctor Who," or "Quantum Leap," is time malleable except for certain fixed points? Can we change small things, but must leave major events like Pearl Harbor alone for the good of humanity?

Time travel theories are never simple. They give me migraines. Even if it IS technologically possible, it shouldn't be considered as a viable action -- let alone the commercial enterprise NDJournalist idiotically suggested. Merely traveling backward in time could easily be akin to committing genocide, and that's with the best of intentions.